pregnant oto?!

[fish_newbie]

i think my female oto is pregnant

i kind of wondered why my two otos have been hinding for awhile.. getting busy 8O ..shes getting really fat and her tummy is darkening up.. what do i do!? i have NO experience with fry or breeding

 

[newaridiar]

I don't think otos are live-bearers, though I could be wrong. Even so, they might be eggs. I would buy some plants that the fry could hide in like java moss. I don't have any personal experience with otos, so I can't really help much

 

[fish_newbie]

ohhh ..probably just eggs

 

[madasafish]

Sadly, not. Though otos (like all Loricariids) are egg-layers, they almost never lay in an aquarium setting. I think your oto is actually ill with a form of bloat fairly unique, and common, to otos. When they travel from South America, they are deprived of food, and the bacteria in their stomach dies. After a few weeks in their new environment, their stomach cannot cope with the food they eat, and they start to bloat with gases produced by improperly-digested food.

How long have you had this oto? Less than a month is my guess...

I've often ruminated on the topic with other AA members. Marineland should try to culture this bacteria and include it in a specially-oto-formulated sinking wafer. This would save a LOT of oto death. I lost, believe it or not, 15 otos to this over 2 weeks.

I could be wrong! But I think you'll find that one oto after another starts to develop this bloat and dies mysteriously. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

 

[fish_newbie]

yeah.. i think ur right ..shes been lying on her back for a while now ..but getting upright again swimming a little bit.. ..this sucks

 

[madasafish]

Sorry to hear it. That oto is quite close to dying by the sound of it.

 

[chasgood]

I bought a oto on friday. It didnt look to good last night or today. Just got home from work and it was dead.
No bloat or anything. It just became less and less active.

fish_newbie.... I hope yours fairs better than mine.

 

[krap101]

i lost 5 in 2 days :'(

 

[fish_newbie]

whoa ..im really sorry to hear that

 

[Madame_X]

I think your oto is actually ill with a form of bloat fairly unique, and common, to otos.

...I could be wrong! But I think you'll find that one oto after another starts to develop this bloat and dies mysteriously. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Unfortunately, I'd have to agree with Madasafish. I lost about four otos one-by-one in this same manner.

Fortunately for me, the three existing ones I had in the tank never caught it. But all the newer ones died within a couple of weeks of each other.

Not much you can do. Its sad.

 

[krap101]

i bought those in janesville. mighta been stress on the 40 min drive. i got the ones i have now from rockford. a 20 min drive. but i got 1 b4 and i only had 1 in there. now i have 2 of different species of otos (i think)

 

[robwatts]

I don't know which it is, but I've had a pair of otos for about 6 months, and one of them has started getting quite bloated. It started about a week ago, and looked like it was pregnant, it was a fairly healthy size. But then it git bigger and bigger, and now it's just floating listlessly, occasionally twitching. Is this the same thing? I haven' had trouble with the other one.

 

[Mogurako]

One mistake people often make is buying ottos for a aquarium that isn't established. I have a 20 long planted aquarium that I waited well over a year to establish before I added ottos. There needs to be a good build up of bio-film and algae for them to eat.

I added 3 of them a couple of months ago and haven't lost a single one.